Gone are the glorious Greeks of old, <br />Glorious in mien and mind; <br />Their bones are mingled with the mould, <br />Their dust is on the wind; <br />The forms they hewed from living stone <br />Survive the waste of years, alone, <br />And, scattered with their ashes, show <br />What greatness perished long ago. <br /> <br />Yet fresh the myrtles there--the springs <br />Gush brightly as of yore; <br />Flowers blossom from the dust of kings, <br />As many an age before. <br />There nature moulds as nobly now, <br />As e'er of old, the human brow; <br />And copies still the martial form <br />That braved Plataea's battle storm. <br /> <br />Boy! thy first looks were taught to seek <br />Their heaven in Hellas' skies: <br />Her airs have tinged thy dusky cheek, <br />Her sunshine lit thine eyes; <br />Thine ears have drunk the woodland strains <br />Heard by old poets, and thy veins <br />Swell with the blood of demigods, <br />That slumber in thy country's sods. <br /> <br />Now is thy nation free--though late-- <br />Thy elder brethren broke-- <br />Broke, ere thy spirit felt its weight, <br />The intolerable yoke. <br />And Greece, decayed, dethroned, doth see <br />Her youth renewed in such as thee: <br />A shoot of that old vine that made <br />The nations silent in its shade.<br /><br />William Cullen Bryant<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-greek-boy/
